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While the recent success of Africa's 'Lionesses' - successful female entrepreneurs - is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the 'Lionesses' and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other finance sources. Our regressions reveal a female-to-male productivity gap of between -11 to -19 percent, values similar to estimates for other African countries. However, when the relationship between gender and productivity is mediated by financial constraints, the gender performance gap disappears. Accordingly, female business-owners who indicate that funding is not a problem, are associated with higher productivity than males, all things equal. In a finding new to the literature, our regressions reveal the importance of supplier credit for Africa's businesswomen.

Underpinning China's technological advancement are the twin-engines of exports and innovation. To better understand China's meteoric economic transformation, we explore the extent to which new products are triggered by exports (direct effects) and by exposure to other exporters (indirect effects). Our methodology (generalized propensity score model) tackles two sources of selectivity bias - at the level of the firm and neighbourhood. Given that production is highly specialized and localized, it would be unusual if firms failed to learn from exposure to local exporters. Our findings reveal an overwhelmingly positive direct effect of exports on new product introductions. Also, a more modest spillover effect. Interestingly, firms with a reduced need to innovate (processing exporters) can also appropriate export spillovers. Our findings have implications for other developing countries seeking to maximise exporting in economic clusters, promoting innovation and ultimately growth.

Ein Lieferkettengesetz kann einen starken Anreiz dafür setzen, dass deutsche Unternehmen sich für nachhaltige Sozial- und Umweltbedingungen in globalen Lieferketten einsetzen. Dabei sollte jedoch überdacht werden, ob es zum jetzigen Zeitpunkt nicht sinnvoller wäre, eine gesetzlich vorgeschriebene Haftung durch eine zunächst zeitlich befristete Selbstverpflichtungsphase zu ersetzen oder zu ergänzen. Während eine ausführlichere Überwachung internationaler Lieferketten kurzfristig zu höheren Kosten für Unternehmen führen kann, ist mittel- bis langfristig mit Kostensenkungen und Effizienzsteigerungen in der Produktion zu rechnen. Dieses wiederum wird die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit deutscher Unternehmen auf den internationalen Märkten erhöhen, in denen auf nachhaltige Produktion geachtet wird.

Opportunities for well-paid employment for women are scarce in many African countries. Entrepreneurship is therefore one way in which women can earn a decent livelihood for themselves and their families. Despite the potential opportunities arising from entrepreneurship, the possibilities are often not fully exploited. Female entrepreneurs in the developing world are severely underperforming. In this PEGNet Policy Brief 'Africa's Female Entrepreneurs - Towards Funding Success' by Aoife Hanley, Holger Görg, Cecilia Hornok and Charles Ackah, the authors examine the scale of the gender productivity gap in African countries and how finance constraints underpin this gap.

We explore the export performance of Africa's underperforming female entrepreneurs, using the Ghanaian ISSER-IGC panel, a comprehensive dataset of manufacturing firms for 2011-2015. Uniquely, the data provides information about the severity of key business constraints, across both male and female entrepreneurs. We find that females are less likely to export (and optimize their exporting) than their male peers. Although reduced access to finance seriously constrains the exports of female entrepreneurs, this limitation does not explain their relative inability to leverage value from exports. Consistent with related work, we find that certain social and cultural constraints, in particular constraints linked to bribes and security concerns, are more deeply felt by female entrepreneurs. This may hint at the exclusion of Africa's females (voluntarily or involuntarily) from male-dominated networks or business practices.

The overarching aim of the study is to investigate the key factors that determine how and how intensively countries can be integrated into the coffee global value chain (GVC) and thus can better reap the globalization benefits. The empirical analysis shows how the international trade in coffee has developed across regions/countries over the past three decades. It provides evidence-based insights into the key determinants of countries' GVC integration in the coffee industry. It discusses countries' functional and product upgrading for their GVC integration. Based on the empirical results obtained, policy implications are derived to support the further development of the coffee GVC. This study serves as a background study for the Coffee Development Report 2020 in preparation by the International Coffee Organisation.

[Introduction ...] This paper, however, is not about evaluating whether or not Germany has, on aggregate, done well out of globalization. Rather, we dig deeper into the economy and acknowledge the fact that it is not countries that trade or invest, but rather firms. We therefore look at data at the micro (firm or establishment) level to shed light on questions such as: What types of firms are involved in trade or investments? What distinguishes these globalized firms, if anything, from firms that are not engaged in these international activities? What benefits are there for the firms and also their workers? To look at these questions, the first part of the paper provides some insights from the existing literature. We firstly review what has become a substantial literature on exporting activity, using data for German firms. Interestingly, but in a sobering way, studies on imports are far less prolific. This knowledge gap is most likely due to a lack of data on import activities of firms. We also look at some studies that investigate the implications of inward investment, or foreign ownership, as well as outward investment by German multinational enterprises (MNEs) at the firm level. In Section 3 of the paper we then use establishment data to provide some more recent evidence on these relationships. While our data easily cover the activities of exporting and foreign ownership, a clear definition of outward investment by German MNEs is more difficult. Information on import activities is not at all available in our data set, the IAB Betriebspanel, which we describe in more detail below. We describe the participation of establishments in international activities. Additionally, we estimate performance premia for establishments engaged in these activities. Finally, we also investigate whether firms starting these activities experience performance improvements as a result. By “performance” we mean establishment productivity and innovation activity, but also employment, wages and skill structure of establishments in order to say something about workers in these types of firms. In the final part of the paper we summarize the main findings, both from our own work and the existing literature, and offer some conclusions.

While African countries are becoming more and more relevant as host countries for suppliers of multinational companies little is known about corporate social responsibility (CSR) in this region. To fill this gap, the present paper explores CSR considerations of foreign affiliates of multinational companies when choosing local African suppliers. The paper suggests a model of three types of determinants, namely firm characteristics, exports, and intra-trade. Analyses of a large-scale and quite unique firm level data for more than 2,000 foreign owned firms in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries demonstrate that firms importing intermediates from their parent company abroad are more likely to implement CSR. Similarly, CSR plays a larger role for affiliates that export to developed countries. Different determinants affect environmental and social CSR activities.

Here is an analysis of the effect of the ISO 9000 certification on the economical results of Russian companies through the use of the propensity score matching (PSM) method, a method which had proven itself reliable at dealing with the selection problems that were highly likely to arise in this research. Informational dataset is built on the basis of a sample of the Industrial companies competitiveness monitoring project, conducted in 2009 by the Institute for Industrial and Market Studies at HSE. The empirical study methodology is given: hypothesis, informational dataset and model of effects evaluation. The main finding of the paper is that holding the ISO 9001 certificate by a Russian manufacturing company stimulates its profitability and reduces costs, but does not lead to sales and asset turnover rises.

This paper looks at the importance of CSR considerations in the decision taken by a foreign affiliate of a multinational company about the choice of local suppliers. We investigate this empirically using unique firm level data for more than 2,000 foreign owned firms in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries. In terms of the role of global value chains we find that firms that import intermediates from their parent company abroad are more likely to implement CSR. Similarly, CSR plays a larger role for affiliates that export their output to developed countries. This suggests that the immediacy of the production chain provides a strong link to CSR: Intermediate inputs are imported from HQ and are then processed, together with locally sourced inputs, into a final good, which is then exported for consumption in developed countries. Furthermore, our results show that the determinants of environmental and social CSR activities are likely to be different.

We explore whether the introduction of trust based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Employing a panel data set of over 5,000 German establishments, we implement a propensity score matching approach where we only consider firms that did not use trust based work contracts initially. Our results show that firms which adopt such contracts tend to be between 11 to 14 percent more likely to improve products. These results hold when we control for another form of flexible time work arrangements, namely working time accounts. Thus, the positive relationship between the adoption of trust based working hours and innovation seems to be driven by the degree of control and self-management over working days, rather than by merely allowing time flexibility.